Topic: Patrick Poole

Almost two years before the deadly Fort Hood shooting by a radicalized Muslim officer, the U.S. Army was explicitly warned that jihadism — Islamic holy war — was a serious problem and threat to personnel in the U.S., according to participants at a major Army-sponsored conference. The annual Army anti-terrorism conference in Florida in February 2008 included presentations on the threat by counterterrorism specialists Patrick Poole, Army Lt. Col. Joseph Myers and Terri Wonder. The meeting was organized by the Army’s provost marshal general and included more than 350 force protection and anti-terrorism professionals who came from major Army installations and commands from around the world, according to participants.

We then had three domestic terror attacks. So what happened to the information from the Florida conference? Others are wondering the same thing: “The incidents have raised questions about whether the Army made any effort to ‘operationalize’ the threat warnings from the 2008 conference and develop policies to counter the threats. ‘The answer quite clearly is no,’ Mr. Poole said.”

This is a serious indictment of the Army and raises still more questions about the post-Fort Hood review. As Tom Joscelyn previously wrote, the Fort Hood review seemed to suggest that the system worked. It brushed by what should have been the central concern:

It says nothing of consequence about [Major Nadal] Hasan or how to stop individuals like him in the future. Hasan is not even named in the report, but instead referred to as the “alleged perpetrator.” The report’s authors contend that the sanctity of the criminal investigation into the shooting needs to be upheld. But this is not an excuse for failing to name the attacker. The whole world knows that Major Nidal Malik Hasan did it. . . .

What is relevant is Hasan’s religious and political beliefs. He is a jihadist, although you would never know it by reading the Pentagon’s report. Instead in the report’s “literature review of risk factors for violence,” one comes across this sentence: “Religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor; most fundamentalist groups are not violent, and religious-based violence is not confined to members of fundamentalist groups.”

Both before and after the terrorist incidents, the Army, it appears, has been stubbornly resisting the need to look into the root causes of such incidents and into our enemies’ ideology or to take the necessary steps to change how threats to its personnel should be assessed. This bodes poorly for our ability to prevent future attacks.

Almost two years before the deadly Fort Hood shooting by a radicalized Muslim officer, the U.S. Army was explicitly warned that jihadism — Islamic holy war — was a serious problem and threat to personnel in the U.S., according to participants at a major Army-sponsored conference. The annual Army anti-terrorism conference in Florida in February 2008 included presentations on the threat by counterterrorism specialists Patrick Poole, Army Lt. Col. Joseph Myers and Terri Wonder. The meeting was organized by the Army’s provost marshal general and included more than 350 force protection and anti-terrorism professionals who came from major Army installations and commands from around the world, according to participants.

We then had three domestic terror attacks. So what happened to the information from the Florida conference? Others are wondering the same thing: “The incidents have raised questions about whether the Army made any effort to ‘operationalize’ the threat warnings from the 2008 conference and develop policies to counter the threats. ‘The answer quite clearly is no,’ Mr. Poole said.”

This is a serious indictment of the Army and raises still more questions about the post-Fort Hood review. As Tom Joscelyn previously wrote, the Fort Hood review seemed to suggest that the system worked. It brushed by what should have been the central concern:

It says nothing of consequence about [Major Nadal] Hasan or how to stop individuals like him in the future. Hasan is not even named in the report, but instead referred to as the “alleged perpetrator.” The report’s authors contend that the sanctity of the criminal investigation into the shooting needs to be upheld. But this is not an excuse for failing to name the attacker. The whole world knows that Major Nidal Malik Hasan did it. . . .

What is relevant is Hasan’s religious and political beliefs. He is a jihadist, although you would never know it by reading the Pentagon’s report. Instead in the report’s “literature review of risk factors for violence,” one comes across this sentence: “Religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor; most fundamentalist groups are not violent, and religious-based violence is not confined to members of fundamentalist groups.”

Both before and after the terrorist incidents, the Army, it appears, has been stubbornly resisting the need to look into the root causes of such incidents and into our enemies’ ideology or to take the necessary steps to change how threats to its personnel should be assessed. This bodes poorly for our ability to prevent future attacks.